Talent or Luck? Evaluating Attribution Bias in Large Language Models

ArXi:2505.22910v2 Announce Type: replace When a student fails an exam, do we tend to blame their effort or the test's difficulty? Attribution, defined as how reasons are assigned to event outcomes, shapes perceptions, reinforces stereotypes, and influences decisions. Attribution Theory in social psychology explains how humans assign responsibility for events using implicit cognition, attributing causes to internal (e.g., effort, ability) or external (e.g., task difficulty, luck) factors. LLMs' attribution of event outcomes based on graphics carries important fairness implications.